Semi-protection level for pages

I think the number of active accounts is 16000 or something ridiculous like that. You can check the accounts registered today and how many edits they've made with this tool.

The edit filter is actually this one

16000? That's it?

I know it's odd to say "That's it?" about it, but that's 16k accounts out of 7 billion people worldwide. How many of those are be sockpuppets? Does it include those usernames that have been burned by vandals?

I'm not saying that all 7 billion people on Earth are gonna get TV Tropes accounts, obviously. But the potential for future expansion is ridiculous, especially if there's a sudden popularity/awareness boom. There were 16 new accounts created today, and it's only 0630 where I live. Plus, that tool only tracks those created on the current date. How would we keep long term track of new usernames and how many edits they have? I can't image how massive a tool that tracks edit counts would have to be.

In the end, I just don't think it'd be feasible. But that's not really my call to make, as I'm not the coder.

EDIT: Oh cool, I didn't know we had that tool, Septimus. That's actually pretty awesome. Don't really think it helps any of the points I tried to make here, though.

edited 24th May '12 4:37:05 AM by battosaijoe

The number of active editing accounts is not 16k. It's more than that.

Am I in the right order of magnitude/how many more zeros do I need? I know that you might not be able to give a specific figure.

Again, though, is it active accounts or just taken/burned usernames?

I said active editing accounts. That means they are active. By editing.

Oh, I missed that. My mistake, Lu.

Eddie just ran a query on active counts, and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 35k wiki editors. Active forum only posters were not included in that, since the two groups don't have a lot of overlap.

Good gravy. That's a bit more than originally estimated.

While I'm curious what was meant by "active", I must admit that that number is easily twice my high-end expectations. However, this isn't the time or the place for that conversation.

The question that seems to be relevant to this discussion is whether there's some sort of cutoff number between casual editors and those that do a lot of wiki work.

Statistically speaking, it would seem to follow a geometric distribution, with many people having a few edits and a few people really stretching the top end with tens or hundreds of thousands of edits. I guess what I'm suggesting to the Fast One is if there's some number that would capture this divide.

Then again, it may not be relevant, but it's at least something for him to consider.

If the issue is just stopping new accounts from editing controversial pages, that's one thing. But to apply some sort of arbitrary standard of what constitutes a "good editor" seems to be a little more work than it's worth.

Well, the reason is to shield the more controversial pages from being vandalized/attacked. I guess I'm just brainstorming about how to set up standards to go about doing that.

If we just go about with a time\edit lockout for new accounts how difficult would that be to implement? Would there be any volunteers who could code the site to do that, or would it be worth asking for donations for it to be done?

There are currently 196,901 registered tropers. Roughly 35K have done some editing in the past 30 days. I'd say we get about 30 new accounts per day, including troll socks.

-jaw drops at the number- A hundred and...

Well, thanks for answering that question. With that said, what sort of opinions do you have on the matter, Fast One? Would something like this be feasible to code up?

Making it so that a page can be locked against editing by accounts that are too young? Not that big a deal. I'll see what I can put together for it this weekend.

Oh thank you, thank you. I really do think this will help immensely with the recent problems we have been having with sock puppets.

The Fast One has heard our plight! We shall sacrifice a fair young maiden on His honor!

Heresy aside, thanks. This will really help the Mass Effect 3 articlewiki.

Where's the Crowning Moment Of Awesome tab on Eddie's page?

Woot! Semi-protection won't stop sock-puppeteering, but it will sure make it so much more difficult to do so, as the Emeethree vandal has been doing for the past two months.

Major props to Eddie!

EDIT: Would it be difficult to add this same functionality to the forums as well? The Emethree Vandal has been feeding there, especially in Ask The Tropers

edited 24th May '12 9:13:42 PM by JudgeSpear

Something similar is already in the forums: new accounts have to wait a while between posts to render spamming impossible.

Ah, how about for discussion pages of each article?

Eddie, this is for you. Thank you!!

Hmm. What should the criteria be for semi-protection? Are there any other pages that frequently get vandalized besides video games and useful notes?

Vandals and trolls usually don't last long enough to make it over the newbie stage and have nothing else to do. So I am guessing that vandalism is going to be the criterium.

For the record, the pages I am thinking of are:

• Mass Effect 3 and subpages.
• Know the Staff
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (possibly)
• DarthWiki.Fallen Creator